I think you undervalue what you as a content provider can do with your choices. Sure if you're aiming for millions of clicks (which doesn't bring that much money these days), you can plaster your site with trackers and hostile script. But if you want to reach out to "hackers", that'll only turn away your audience. An alternate scenario to yours could be that Google's web is racing to the bottom and loosing readers (of the kind you care about at least).